fruitless toil
It occurs to me that my December-long “novel” (more of a quick first draft to get ideas pinned down before they run away from me) has no tangible purpose, in that I am not trying to get published or pursue a career as an author.
But I think that it has clearly been bringing other intangible benefits. For one, I really like having something that is just mine. My own. No one to say it is good, bad, slow, fast, awkward, graceful. It’s just for me to judge and enjoy. Ok fine, I did let Seppo read parts of it. It’s mine, so I can do whatever I want with it. Heh. The other benefit is a littler weirder, but I think that it is good that Seppo sees me pursue a major project outside of work. Even though I have a lot of priorities that do not have deadlines, I think that to him, this is a “proof” of something to him — things I already knew, like I’m responsible, that I have my own internal coach for things I really care about, that when I make a real commitment that has meaning to me, that I keep it.
I know. It sounds weird. But even though I didn’t need it to prove it to myself, I think he needed to see it.
revealing more of my pinko nature
I admit it. I have not studied queer theory or had extensive training in gender issues. I am only speaking as an individual, who perhaps needs to go stick her head into a book to understand the bigger picture.
My issue is this: it seems like a big part of the political debate about queerness or homosexuality or other “alternative” lifestyles (when the day comes when we don’t have to use that term, we’ll see a brighter day), is whether or not being homosexual is a natural part of who you are or if it’s something separate from that and it’s something you can choose. I see several things wrong with this viewpoint, but as I’ve said, I’m undereducated in this.
The first of my problems is that I am frustrated with the obsession with “natural” versus “unnatural”. To me, this fixation, which extends to medicines, medical philosophies, religious philosophies, and a multitude of other things, is absurd. People argue for marijuana because it’s “natural” and people have used it for ages. I don’t stand in the way of marijuana because its pharmacological effects, both long and short term for comparable use, is far less severe than alcohol, not because it’s natural. I mean, opium is natural. So what? It’s useful in some forms, but stupidly addictive and harmful in many. I hate when people talk about natural supplements. I have nothing against the fact that things that have existed in nature have had a much longer time to be tested by the human race and that man-made drugs or substances may reveal unknown side effects; thallidimide (crap on my spelling!) babies come to mind. I have no problems with driving my car, which is really quite unnatural. But I do have a problem with people not understanding that it’s not simply a matter of natural == good and “unnatural”/man-made/etc == bad. Labor and birth without drugs, natural but unnecessarily painful. The ability to graft skin on burn victims, extremely unnatural but good.
And so the first part of my problem is that people think natural is good and natural is the only right way to go about things, so that they think that homosexuality needs to be judged in the same way. It’s not like that. A lot of things in life don’t fall into those neat little boxes.
The second part is on why we think that if we can choose to be gay or not, it is ok to discriminate again them. There are other life choices like religion which are protected rights, something we are supposed to be allowed to choose in this country, and if you persecute people based on their religion, it is a hate crime, which I think is the way it should be. Sure, you can’t choose what race you are born as, and discriminating against race is wrong, but we also generally accept now that we ARE allowed to decide what race you marry (er, grammar, but you get the idea), and discriminating against mixed race couples is wrong too. To me, it’s not dissimilar to gay relationships. Say homosexuality is a choice for every single person, and not something they were born as. So what? So why should it be ok to persecute gays and marginalize them, even if you think it’s a choice?
My personal take on being gay or queer (or any other life variable, actually, including such mundane things as career, housing, people you want to be friends with, etc.) is that I don’t care who you love, who you want to sleep with, if you wanna be a top or a bottom or what you like you pretend is in your underpants, as long as it involves full aware and consenting adults. And I don’t care if you are doing it because you want to or because you think that’s who you are and you have no ability to go about things another way. If I like you, I like you, if I hate you, I hate you, because in the end, I only care if people are nice and funny.
So, in the end, if you aren’t nice or funny, get the hell away from me. 😀
week two == weak too
Ok, so I didn’t fare as well in my week two as I did in my week one of writing. But over the weekend, I crossed the 25K wor mark, and as a reward, Seppo took me to Aperto tonight. Oh the tasty.
So, last night, I wrote the first kiss between the MCs, and tonight, I sort of got carried away and wrote the first half of a love scene for them [read: hot monkey sex]. Hahha. Hrm. I’m not sure where it will end up in the plot, but I figure I can write it now and use it later.
lost
Arg. The tv show Lost is so good and compelling, minute-by-minute, that it’s driving me nuts. Tonight, I watched one early in the evening while Seppo was taking a nap (he has been so exhausted lately), and the fact that I had one more episode on the replayTV was so distracting that I couldn’t concentrate too well on my writing. I did, however, resolve a problem with the plot I had been having for about three days though, so I’m pretty happy.
online buddies
It appears that I’ve made a couple of writing buddies, which is fantastic. I had a couple of 30 minute sprints and a 15 minute sprint tonight, to catch up to my daily quota, as I didn’t have a chance to write at all during the day. A “sprint” is when people give themselves an allotted amount of time and write as much as they can, then come back to report on it. 🙂 The others beat me by a mile, but I got to a critical point in the plot while maintaining my daily average, so I am happy. I also hit another major milestone, and didn’t even notice it! OMGWTFBBQ!!! I really must stop saying this at every non-opportunity. I’m up to 17,569 words.
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In other news, I’m totally hooked on the TV show “Lost”. It’s like what I wanted Survivor to be, except better. It’s weird… “Lost” is a scripted drama and “Survivor” is supposed to be “reality tv”, but “Lost” gives me a better sense of the fear of being ship-/plane-wrecked and feels less artificial. I mean, on how many wrecked islands are you going through an obstacle course made of bamboo and twine? Who knows? I’ve never been to a deserted island, so maybe all of them are like that. Right.
explanation
Let me explain a little about what I mean about unexpected things happening. I mean, that sounds stupid, because I’m the one at the keyboard, typing stuff, and it’s not like something possesses me and writes stuff for me while I’m unconscious. Heh.
Here is one example. I have several pretty big supporting characters. I wrote about them independently, not ever having planned for them to meet up or anything. They were both linked directly to the main characters for specific plot-driven purposes. Going over their individual scenes, I realized I had portrayed them as somewhat lonely, although this loneliness is manifested in entirely different ways for the two people, and wondered if there was going to be room in the subplots for either of them to meet someone or another. The more I thought about the characters, the more I realized that the two are in fact quite compatible with each other. When I realized it, it wasn’t a matter of trying to hook up random people until I found a set with the least resistance, but that the personalities were such a good complement that it would be unnatural for them not to hit it off, should they ever meet up in a scene. So all I have to do is have them meet up at some point, and it should naturally progress from there.
realizations
My public voice over email now sounds like a giddy teenager. I think this comes from years of having to be overly cordial to people at work and at school for fear of offending them when I use what used to be my “regular” tone. Now, I use it by default all the time. It kind of grates on my nerves.
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I am back to capitalization because the bulk of my writing during the day is on my novel, and when I blog, it is now a conscious effort to go back and edit to small case. It seems that just a week into the project, I have effectively killed off my Inner Editor to the degree that I can spew writing without caring on the first try.
I’ve been so busy blogging about my wordcount progress that I really haven’t said much about the process itself. I’ve found that it’s true what they say; your plot will surprise you. Without having a fully fleshed out plot, I am constantly surprised by the way scenes are turning out — not to say that they are of a higher quality than I expected, because they are not. It’s more that things that I don’t expect to happen do happen, and in ways that fairly neatly ties in things I had written earlier.
I used to obsess about the perfection of each sentence when writing “creatively”, and couldn’t go on until each sentence said exactly what I wanted with exactly the right tone. But now, I have found the freedom to write what I want now, get enough of the idea across that at least I will understand it upon re-read, and trust myself to be able to go back and replace some of the crap with better prose.
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I am getting back reports via a mailing list about how well my high school’s 10 year reunion went. I am extremely jealous to have missed it. It sounds like it went better than most people could have imagined. Instead of people milling about with the same set of people they knew well in high school or with the people they came with, they mingled with all sorts of people and had a great time catching up. It sounds like the organizers did a great job. I really want to go to the next reunion. I was surprised by how many people had kids. Some were pretty big too! 🙂 Some looked exactly like their father/mother. It was amazing.
fifteenated
NaNoWriMo Progress. Just broke the 15K barrier, but today had a lot of padding, I have to admit.
I felt pretty awful today. Worked from home, but I think I might have to look over what I did today to see if I have to count it as a PTO instead of a day at home. Bleh. Seppo has been really great while I’ve been feeling bad. It started over the weekend and crested, I hope, today.
gulp
so i bit the bullet and let seppo read up to last night’s progress. i was such a nervous wreck. he seemed to enjoy the “dead fish handshake” scene, much more so than i could have hoped for. yay! made me feel really good about it. my hands were as clammy as those of the protagonist in that scene.
i think that i won’t reach the end of the story at 50K words. i’m supposed to be 25% to the goal now, but the story is not nearly at the 25% marker. i wonder how i will feel at the end of the month, whether i will want to continue to finish the story or take a long break.
teh r0x0r
NaNoWriMo Progress. i have crossed the 10K line. in my excitement, i am spewing l337, something that i never do. hee.
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DUDE!!!!!!!! the game that seppo, klay, colin, max, and stephen are working on is SO FREAKING AWESOME IT MAKES ME WANT TO DIE!!!! ahem. no, seriously, i LOVE this game. it’s a game i’d sit in front of for hours and hours and hours, not realizing it is 5 am and that i need to go to work in the morning. i’d buy it in a second. i can’t believe the leaps in quality that it took over the last week. they have done an incredible amount of tweaking that shows. it is looking extremely polished and the puzzle levels are very fun.